Beautiful Girl

Part Sixteen

He is chopping the greens while she is battling with the onions, trying to peel the skin.
"Why do these onions have such thin skin?" She whines for twentieth time in past fifteen minutes and he suppresses the smile that threatens to bloom on his lips.
The evening has fallen.
The world outside is darkness, and the lights shinning below are like stars that have fallen on earth. They work in silence that is broken by her grumbling, and by the time she's done peeling onions, she can barely keep her eyes open.
"Fucking ammonia! If it didn't taste as good as it does, I wouldn't touch this thing with a two feet pole."
He gives her an amused glance when he takes the peeled onions from her.
"We all have to work a little for good things in life."
"But I didn't have to do anything for you. One day I opened my eyes, and there you were..." She tells him, fondness lurking behind her words.
He reddens at the compliment.
She says the cheesiest things.
"Can we focus on the cooking now?" He mutters, hot and bothered by the gaze she has aimed at him.
"You're blushing," She informs him gleefully, and he curses softly under his breath.
"Why, Arnav, I didn't know you could blush!"
"Well, you don't have exclusive rights on feeling shy. And nobody has talked to me like that."
He continues chopping onions, aware that he has bared a little more of himself to her.
"I am the first then, aren't I?"
"How hot do you like your food?" He asks, trying to change the subject.
"The answer is very and don't try to get out of this. You know everything worth knowing about me. I wanna know you too," She says and when he raises his head, she adds, "Husband."
He sighs as he puts down the knife.
That word on her lips, it does things to him.
Makes his already weak resolve weaker.
Is it wrong that he wants her for himself?
"What do you wanna know?"
He puts the fish in the pan to sear it while he prepares the vegetables.
"Have you ever fallen in love?"
Oh.
He takes his time trying to decide how to broach this subject. She knows a little about Avantika, but not all of the sorry mess.
And saying he has only fallen for her to her face right now would cheapen his declaration. He doesn't want her to feel indebted to him to return his feelings.
He doesn't want her saying things just because he has a house and she has nowhere else to go.
"No," He says finally. "I thought I did once. A long time ago. But it turned out to be nothing."
He sees her face fall, sees it turn from a flower to bare stalk.
And the sight of her, desolate eyes and  sad lips, it's unbearable.
"You do know I can't say the words right now to you, don't you?" He asks her. He has to.
"Why?" She queries petulantly.
"You know why. Or does your ego demand my words as salve?" He sautes the onions and adds the spices.
"Can't I have something for myself?"
Her eyes are soft and so is her request, but someone between them has to be the adult.
"You have me, don't you?"
"So, you will go on pretending you didn't tell me the words, or didn't confess them to someone else?"
"Yes," He answers with finality.
"For how long?"
He has no answer for that.
They let their silence talk instead of their words.
It doesn't grate like silences usually do and the desire to add trite words to this absent conversation doesn't surmount.
This silence is sweet and echoes of their yearning that words are not allowed to express.
"Okay, so who was the almost love? Someone long before me, right?" She asks, almost in a childish challenge.
She somehow knows how to wheedle answers from him.
She always does.
"Hmm."
"Where is she now?" She is impatient and he almost smiles at her insistence. He should tell her that Avantika doesn't mean a thing to him. That unlike other lovelorn people, he doesn't remember and sigh about his ex, but watching her get worked up is fun.
It soothes something in his heart.
She looks like a kitten sharpening her claws.
"She's my father's current wife," He delivers casually and watches as her brain stops processing.
It is few seconds before she looks at him and mutters, "What?"
He switches off the burner. The fish is done. He only needs to make chapattis.
"Are you kidding me, Arnav?" She is aghast.
"No. I am serious."
He dumps the dough on counter to stretch it out a little.
"What the fuck? Like what the actual fuck? Is she blind?"
The question blindsides him.
"What?"
She rounds the island counter to come into the kitchen space.
"Move aside," She orders and he does.
She washes her hands and pats them dry with towel before rounding the stretched dough to start the process again.
"Arvind Malik looks like someone chewed up a piece of rubber and spit it out..."
"You googled Arvind Malik?"
"You bet your ass I did." She's on a roll as she slaps the dough, stretches it across the counter and rounds it up again.
Her wrists don't look frail at all and he finds himself transfixed at the sight of the vein running like a branch beneath her fair skin.
"I go by Mala_D on Twitter and I curse him out on each of his posts. It's a part of my daily routine..."
"Mala_D?"
That jingle from the commercial he saw ages ago on TV is still fresh in his mind.
She looks at him from the corner of her eyes and he's barely keeping his laugh in check.
"Don't you dare," She threatens him, her hands dividing the dough in balls. "I thought it was cool at the time."
"Naming yourself after a brand of birth control pills?"
"Pass me the rolling pin," She orders him. "And put the tawa on the burner. I will roll out the rotis, you do the rest."
He gives her the look, one eyebrow raised and she scowls at him.
"I have had enough practice in rolling out these things. Used to do this once, almost daily, back at..."
They stand together, bodies almost touching, working like they've done this a lots of times before.
They haven't.
"So, is this Avantika blind?"
"I don't know." He puts the puffed up chapattis in the casserole.
"Well, my gain, her loss," She announces matter of factly as she finishes rolling out the last roti.
She starts cleaning up, and he's a little gobsmacked.
See, he hasn't lived with anyone before.
Not like this.
Back at RM, there were people who were paid to look after his needs.
And though his family lived in the same house, they all had their seperate wings.
They met twice a day.
Once at the table for breakfast, and once for dinners if he came back from office at a reasonable hour.
It isn't gonna be like that because this is their home.
His and Khushi'.
They are going to be the only ones living here.
And he is going to be the one taking care of her.
Or that's what he had told himself.
But this, right here, is maybe what partnership feels like.
"Oi, Arnav! Have you had your meds?" She kinda shouts in front of his face and he realizes he has been too lost in his thoughts.
"I have ears, you know," He comments mildly.
She rolls her eyes at him and opens the cabinet to pull out the plates.
He keeps staring while she plates the food and takes it out at the dining table.
"Bring the water, will you," She hollers from outside and he picks up the jug, repressing the grin that threatens to break out and walks off to join her for dinner at the table....